“He got out of the way so fast we did not get a good look at him, but it is not a bad bite, and everything has been done that could be done, and now Miss Helen is going to take one more of these little green pellets and you and I are going to carry her up to Josephus.”
The ladies were very solicitous and anxious to do anything in their power, but they were calm and quiet and Helen thanked her stars that the rest of the party had gone back and not ventured so far into the gorge.
“It would have been awful to have them buzzing all around me, yelling and screaming and squealing,” she said to herself, and then the thought came to her of the horror all the girls had of snakes and the consternation her accident would cause among the week-enders. But why need they know? It was her own fault that she had been bitten, and such a thing need never happen again if only proper precautions were taken, such as leggins and looking where you stepped and keeping away from the Devil’s Gorge, where snakes were sure to abound.
“Dr. Wright, do you think it would be possible to keep this thing perfectly quiet? I am so afraid that my being bitten by a snake would give our camp such a bad name that it would be a failure from now on.”
“Of course it could be kept quiet. What do you think, Somerville?”
“Me! Why, I’m game to keep my mouth shut.”
“We agree with you perfectly, Miss Carter, and will say nothing at all in regard to the accident,” the spinsters assured her, and they looked so kind and sensible that Helen’s heart was warmed to them and she wondered that she had not noticed before what very intelligent, good faces both of them had.
“All right,” said Dr. Wright, “it is perfectly ethical for a physician to keep his patient’s malady to himself. Miss Helen Carter is suffering from an injury to her ankle. If the inquisitive choose to make of it a sprain it is their own affair. Now, Lewis, how shall we manage? It will be pretty awkward for us to make a basket of our hands going up this cliff,” and with that he stooped and picked Helen up in his arms, and with no more exertion than if she had been Bobby, he made his way up the mountain.
“[Would it hurt me to walk? I can’t bear to be so much trouble.]”
“It is best to keep very quiet. I am pretty sure there is going to be no trouble, but I must have you behave just exactly as though there was.”